This initiative has been generously supported by the Spencer F. & Cleone P. Eccles Family Foundation

“We will emphasize those issues that have for too long gone under-studied by scholars and under-reported in the mainstream media. And we hope to begin conversations that will lead to some salutary results.”

– David M. Kennedy, Historian and faculty co-director of the Bill Lane Center for the American West

In this illustrated report, the Bill Lane Center for the American West's research assistant Emily Bookstein (Stanford '11) looks at the largest and longest water transfer of its kind in California history. Click the image to read more.

Since the mid-1990s, farmers in the Palo Verde valley in Southern California have embraced a new way to supplement their livelihood: temporarily transferring their water rights to urban utilities in exchange for cash. By not farming, farmers free up to 111,000 acre-feet of agricultural water per year for the cities — enough for 220,000 homes. In this illustrated report, the Bill Lane Center for the American West's research assistant Emily Bookstein (Stanford '11) looks at the largest and longest water transfer of its kind in California history.

There’s five feet of snow now at Bison Lake, on Colorado’s west slope north of Glenwood Springs. Melted and measured by the folks who run the federal SNOTEL network, that translates to 15.6 inches of “snow water equivalent”, the metric that matters once spring and summer warmth start its trip down into the Colorado River.

The water nerds pronounce SWE as “swee”, a word that sounds vaguely like a ski move, but it’s really the most important number in western water right now, the measure of water supply for the year to come, sitting in the relatively small patch of high country that feeds the entire Colorado River Basin. Last year at this time, the SWE values at Bison Lake were nearly twice as high, and the bounty just kept building. This year things aren’t looking so good.

In December, I paid a visit to Boulder Harbor on the west shore of Lake Mead to see the results for myself. Boulder Harbor is one of those places where the dropping reservoir is made tangible. Two years ago, its boat ramp was closed, its shrinking harbor abandoned to an epic flock of American coots feasting on the critters left in the muck and an osprey that entertained me with a spectacular dive to pick off a stranded fish. Now, thanks to last year’s big snowpack, the water’s back, and boaters have displaced my osprey and coots.

But things appear to be headed back in the other direction. On its face, the effect is clear. After rising with last year’s big snowpack, Lake Mead and Lake Powell, the Colorado River’s two largest reservoirs, are forecast to drop a collective 42 feet in surface elevation over the next year, according to the latest forecast from the US Bureau of Reclamation.

But the while those results are in some sense obvious – reservoirs go up in a wet year and down in a dry one – there’s a subtler problem buried in the Bureau of Reclamation’s data. (Read more)

As western water leaders converged on Las Vegas in December 2001, Southern California’s inability to contain its voracious appetite seemed finally to be bumping up against reality - there is only so much water in the Colorado River.

Shared among seven states and Mexico via a shifting, uncertain set of bargains, the river was running up against the era of limits.

For years, California had been living large off the surplus of others. It slurped Colorado River leftovers other states weren’t using, pumping it 250 miles to rapidly growing coastal cities. But as the rest of the southwest grew and began taking its rightful share of the Colorado, California faced an urgent deadline. It had to come up with a plan to cut its use or see a large share of its water supply simply cut off on Jan. 1, 2003.

Testifying at a Dec. 10 House field hearing, Larry Anderson, head of Utah’s Division of Water Resources, was blunt. If California did not tame its appetites, the other states dependent on the Colorado River expected the federal government to step in and enforce the “Law of the River”, the maze of laws that govern distribution of the river’s water. “Appropriate enforcement is critical to protecting our rights,” Anderson said. 1

In response, Southern California Congresswoman Grace Napolitano's question to the federal government’s top water official sounded more like a plea. If California is making a good faith effort, she asked, could the Golden State have more time? Coming from a representative of the region’s largest state and economic powerhouse, the plea also contained a hint of a threat: “California cannot afford the immediate reduction by that amount of water,” she said. “Our economy reaches out to the neighboring states so that if we suffer, so do the rest of the states around us.”

Sitting at the witness table, Interior Department’s assistant secretary Bennett Raley responded with what, in the coded language of western water law, amounted to an ultimatum. His boss, Interior Secretary Gale Norton, was ready to cut California’s share. If the state missed the deadline, “the Secretary will have to use all means at her disposal to ensure that she is in compliance with the Law of the River.” 2

Carving a course

The Colorado River carves a defining course through North American geography and history. Winter snow falling in the Rockies, mostly in Colorado and Wyoming, feeds it. The Colorado and its longest tributary, the Green, spend much of their lives in the deep, arid canyon country of the arid interior western United States.

The river and its tributaries pass through seven U.S. states – Wyoming, Utah, Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada and California – before making a short run between the Mexican states of Sonora and Baja California to the Gulf of California. (Read more)

The sudden rush of water into the lake has meant seven-day workweeks for the National Park Service and concessionaire crews that manage the boating facilities. Again and again they have reeled in floating docks and marina utility lines that were extended as the reservoir shrank. Dive teams were called in to move anchors.

At the Hite marina on the lake's northern end, where boating facilities had been stranded on the dry lake bed for years, workers used a backhoe and trucks to free them from layers of muck and silt as the water rose.

This is not a criticism of Boxall, one of the best reporters on the Western water beat. Such is water management on the Colorado River that, in the wake of the worst drought in a century of record-keeping, from 2000 to 2010, everyone in the seven western U.S. states and Mexico that depends on the Colorado River continued to get their full allotment. As the lakes receded, journalists (myself among them) turned to the recreational boating business in our search for a visible manifestation of drought. Marina operators engaged in the ritual they call “chasing water”, moving their floating docks farther and farther out into the lakes as the reservoirs shrank. Reporters followed along.

With this post we welcome John Fleck, a reporter with 20 years of experience with the Albuquerque Journal covering science and environmental issues. In the past decade, he has made aridity, climate change, drought and the resulting water policy questions a central topic of his newspaper work. As Albuquerque and Santa Fe, northern New Mexico's two largest metro areas, have shifted in recent years to using water imported from the Colorado River Basin, his journalism has emphasized the relationship between New Mexico's water and broader regional waterscience, politics and policy questions. He is the author of "A Tree Rings' Tale," a book for young people about climate, science, water and the West, and is working on "Moving Water", a book about Colorado River water policy in the 21st century.

– John McChesney, Rural West Program Director

By John Fleck

The Law of the River – the stack of compacts, statutes, court decisions and operating rules governing the division of the Colorado River’s precious water – once had a sacred aura. “It was tantamount to having been written on tablets,” in the worlds of Las Vegas water manager Pat Mulroy.

Pat Mulroy heads up the Southern Nevada Water Authority, which supplies water to the Las Vegas Valley. Las Vegas gets 90 percent of its water from the Colorado River. Nevertheless, Mulroy supervises one of the smallest straws sucking water from the Colorado. By way of comparison, Nevada is allocated 300,000 acre feet of water from the Colorado, while California can suck up 4.4 MILLION acre feet. But don’t let appearances fool you. Mulroy is one of the strongest voices for seven-state, basin-wide agreements on how the precious flow of the Colorado should be apportioned, especially in times of shortage. Her grasp of the demands on the river, from its headwaters to its trickle into the Sea of Cortez, is formidable. Witness the sweep of this description, where she ties the Colorado system into the Bay-Delta system of California. For those of you who are not water wonks, Metropolitan refers to the Metropolitan Water District, which serves 26 cities and water agencies in southern California.

We recently interviewed Mulroy about the 11 year drought on the Colorado, about whether the huge snowpack this year means the crisis is over, and about what should be done going forward. You can read the interview here, but I think it’s more interesting to listen to her, so we are providing audio as well. First, though, a note about Lake Mead water levels, since they come up over and over again in this discussion. Mead is full at 1229 feet, it has averaged 1173 feet, its drought level is 1125, and its critical shortage level is 1025.

As part of our Rural West Initiative, we are examining the crisis on the Colorado River, with a close eye on its impact on rural communities, and the past, present, and future of agriculture in the Colorado River Basin.

We join the conversation on the Colorado River crisis by posting a provocative speech given by Doug Kenney at the December, 2010 meeting of the Colorado River Water Users Association (CRWUA) in Las Vegas. He recently authored a report for the Western Water Policy Program entitled, Rethinking the Future of the Colorado River. He called his speech at CRWUA a "Reader’s Digest" version of that report.

The report is based on interviews with 29 Colorado River experts and stakeholders who were promised anonymity in exchange for their views. The need for anonymity suggests the sensitivity of the subject; apparently, real candor about hot button river issues can only be obtained by insulating the interviewees from their respective constituencies.

The report is an excellent primer on the issues confronting the 30 million people using Colorado River water amidst the uncertainties created by climate change and growing populations.

With Lake Mead at 39 percent capacity and Lake Powell at around 59 percent after an 11-year drought, there’s no question that there is a crisis on the Colorado River, and, experts predict, climate change will make things worse. With 30 million people dependent on the river, the outcome of disputes on distribution of Colorado River water is critical for the West. Researchers from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography say Lake Powell has a 50 percent chance of becoming unusable by 2021. Some experts say that within the next 15 years, the Central Arizona Project, which supplies Phoenix and Tucson and the agricultural lands between them, may become the testing ground to see what happens when the water runs low. Is the 1922 Compact still the best law of the river?

“We need more and better and different conversations now, rather than waiting for litigation and empty reservoirs later.”

Doug Kenney, Director of the Western Water Policy Program & Senior Research Associate, Natural Resources Law Center, University of Colorado.

We join the conversation on the Colorado River crisis by posting a provocative speech given by Doug Kenney at the December, 2010 meeting of the Colorado River Water Users Association (CRWUA) in Las Vegas. He recently authored a report for the Western Water Policy Program entitled, Rethinking the Future of the Colorado River. He called his speech at CRWUA a "Reader’s Digest" version of that report.